This invention relates to support members for supporting and connecting structural members such as flooring members or beams.
It is known from applicant's Canadian Pat. No. 989,134 issued May 18, 1976 that flooring members which are generally T-shaped in cross-section can be constructed with the use of glass fiber reinforcements and suitable polyesters. By using a pultrusion process to construct these flooring members, they can be made particularly strong and thus are suitable for heavy load areas such as animal pens and floor areas in vehicles for transporting livestock. In addition, these flooring members have the advantage that they are not subject to corrosion or rot which can be a significant problem when other materials are used to construct flooring for animals. These known flooring members have a horizontal top portion having a substantially flat upper surface suitable for forming a portion of the floor surface. In addition they have a vertically-extending support portion which enables the flooring member to withstand the heavy loads without undue bending.
As also disclosed in Canadian Pat. No. 989,134, these T-shaped flooring members can be supported by and held together by the use of generally flat tie bars which stand upright on a longitudinal edge. These known tie bars have suitable slots extending downwardly from the upper edge thereof to accommodate the vertically extending support portion of the T-shaped flooring member. With the use of two or more of these tie bars, a number of T-shaped flooring members can be connected together in a parallel arrangement to form a floor surface. The use of the bars also has the advantage of distributing a heavy load applied to one flooring member to adjacent flooring members.
Because these known tie bars only withstand the loading forces on the flooring members substantially at one location which is at the bottom edge of the T-shaped flooring member, these known tie bars may be subject to excessive wear, particularly when there is not a good close fit between the T-shaped flooring member and the tie bar. In addition, because the horizontal top portion of each flooring member is not supported in any manner by the tie bar, there may be slight movement of the T-shaped flooring members as heavy loads are applied to them and this movement may also result in eventual wear to the tie bar and perhaps even eventual failure of the tie bar or the T-shaped flooring member. It is thus desirable to provide an inexpensive and easily constructed support member which adequately supports not only the bottom edge of the T-shaped flooring member but also the two upper side edges of the flooring member. In addition there is a desire for a tie bar or support member better able to transfer a large point loading applied to one flooring member to adjacent flooring members.
Accordingly, one object of the present invention is to provide an integral, one-piece support member which provides good load support to structural members such as flooring.
Another object of the invention is to provide an inexpensive support member which will support both bottom edges of structural members connected thereto and also upper, side edges of the structural members.
A further object of the invention is to provide an easily constructed support member capable of connecting in load bearing relationship a number of T-shaped flooring members.